January 2010

I wasn’t going to write a blog this week, because Sue Koch and I are very busy preparing for our upcoming four-week tele-seminar we call Resolution Breakthrough: Designing Your Fresh Start for 2010. But when I received this email, forwarded from a fellow TruePurpose Coach ™, I couldn’t resist sharing it with you. It’s a spot-on and very funny look at what the Ego can do to us when we aren’t fully conscious of its role.

Please, don’t get me wrong, though. This does NOT say, and I do not believe, that the Ego is “bad.” As a Certified True Purposed Coach ™, my job is to help my clients discover their Life Purpose. Along the way, I also must help them get their Soul’s desire to lead a life of fulfillment and purpose into partnership with their Ego’s desires for acknowledgment, material comfort and lots of other, sometimes less beneficial outcomes. Try as you might, you cannot ignore your Ego, because, as this poem so cleverly reveals, it has a LOT of influence in your life. It is your Ego that “drives the car.” Your Soul (or Higher Self, if you prefer) can’t walk and talk and sign checks, but your Ego can! So your Soul absolutely needs the help of your Ego in order to carry out your Life’s Purpose in the world.

Your Ego’s primary job is to keep you safe – to make sure you survive. But, as Mr. Kalechstein points out, it also has a lot of OTHER things on its agenda, including the four basic human emotional needs: Certainty, Variety, Significance and Love/Connection. Getting these emotional needs met is your Ego’s non-stop quest!

My goal as a True Purpose Coach is to have your Soul and Ego “play nice” together, so that each gets what it wants for you. When they are in partnership, you will be a happy, healthy, wealthy and emotionally satisfied human being! Your Soul gets what it wants when you are doing what you were meant to do in this world: expressing the unique quality that only YOU express in just the particular way that YOU do. And your Ego gets to ride in the “passenger seat” and enjoy all the riches and honor life can offer — and there’s nothing wrong with that!

Oh, The Places Your Ego Will Go
By Scott Kalechstein

Your ego will travel with you on this earth
And be your companion for worser or worse
It pretends it’s your friend, your bestest amigo
And it makes you feel guilty, that’s the job of the ego
It has good judgment and will help you be strong
So it has to remind you you’ve done it all wrong
You’re weak and you’re lazy and you can’t get a clue
That’s the voice of the ego trying to motivate you
Oh, the places you’ll go and the guilt trips you’ll travel
As the ego plays judge and bangs down on its gavel

But you always can get some relief from your shame
By projecting it on to the others you’ll blame
For that is the ego at its beastiest best
It nurses its grievances close to its chest
It milks every upset for things to complain about
And turns molehills to mountains to put you in pain about
No trust is a must you must constantly worry
No peace till deceased you must stay in a hurry

Oh, the places you’ll go and the people you’ll see
All through the lens of “What’s in it for me?”
For the ego believes there is something it lacks
And until it is found it won’t let you relax
You’ve got to keep moving at speeds that are blinding
Keep searching and searching but not really finding
Perhaps you will find it in the next one you’ll date
True love at first sight with a soul kind of mate
It’s great for a while till the egos take hold
Cause when two halves combine they do not make a whole
It’s hot at the start but it will turn to cold
For when two halves collide they cannot make a whole

So the ego moves on ever constantly striving
Addicted to seeking and afraid of arriving
You’re traveling fast at the speed of surviving
With fear in the drivers seat doing the driving
The joys of each moment go swishing on by
As the ego keeps reaching for pies in the sky
Reaching and reaching with arms that are flailing
And the ego loves giving you F for your failings

Or perhaps you are on the fast track to success
You’re constantly driven to be great, better, best!
You’re a mover, a shaker, a big time achiever
You’re a real self-made man, a dazzling diva
You’re rich and you’re famous and make quite a splash
You’re on top of the world and you’re rolling in cash
You drive the right car and you’ve married the right spouse
Today you’re on Oprah, this evening the White House

But at night insecurity pays you a call
Cause you know anytime that you could lose it all
Your shrink says to rest and your spouse sure agrees
Your doctor says, “Ulcers, take fourteen of these.”
You know you should slow it down sooner or later
But your foot is just glued to the accelerator
Your ego consoles, “Well, at least we’re successful
It’s a sign of success to be constantly stressful
You’ve made it to prime time and everyone loves you.”
(But your self-esteem’s built on what others think of you)

One day when you’ve failed and succeeded enough
You witness your ego exposed in the buff
And you realize without all its protective clothing
That the ego is simply a state of self-loathing
And beyond that you find out the biggest of deals
That you’ve dreamt up the ego, it’s not even real!
So for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health
You commit to the journey of loving yourself
You take back the projections you placed upon others
And find through forgiveness real peace is discovered
You realize the glory you searched for outside you
Is what you are made of and can’t be denied you
So you give up your plans and your potions and pills
And you practice contentment and learn how to chill
Your old superstitions have gone up in smoke
(Like you can’t rest in peace until after you croak)

While resting in peacefulness you get inspired
To go out in the world with some newfound desires
Desires that spring from your heart and your soul
And wherever they take you you’re going there whole
Cause your ego is now in the passenger seat
It rolls down the window and takes in the treats
You’re not in a hurry you’re taking it slow
Cause the journey’s as rich as the places you’ll go
Where you are going you don’t need to know
For the journey’s as rich as the places you’ll go.

Scott Kalechstein is a writer, an entertainer, a traveling minister, a counselor and coach, a modern day troubadour and inspirational speaker. He lives with his partner and daughter in Marin, California and loves presenting at conferences, giving talks, concerts and workshops. In his phone counseling practice, he is a relationship specialist, helping both individuals and couples enjoy more conscious relationships. You can visit http://www.scottsongs.com <http://www.scottsongs.com> to read more about his work, to hear his talks or to sample songs from his nine CD’s. Send him an email to receive writings like this one on a semi-occasional basis.
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Get one hour of F.R.E.E. Coaching on Goal-Setting

If you missed the F.R.E.E. Tele-class I did with Lifestyle and Design Coach Sue Koch on January 20, there’s still time to hear the replay! Go to this link, and listen to the streaming audio near the bottom of the page: http://myjanuaryjumpstart.com

We hope once you hear this very valuable information showing you how to set the RIGHT goals for yourself – High Quality Goals – you will want to actually SET and FULFILL them in 2010!

Our upcoming four-part Tele-seminar, Resolution Breakthrough: Designing Your Fresh Start for 2010, which begins at 6pm PST on Wednesday February 3, is 100%GUARANTEED to do just that! If you aren’t in action on your #1 Big Goal for 2010 by the end of February, we will give you your money back, no questions asked! So what have you got to lose?

Go to the replay NOW and learn the secrets to avoiding resolution resignation in 2010. If you do it by 12 midnight this Wednesday, you can get $50 OFF the registration price for the Tele-seminar, so don’t delay!

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes, but no plans. – Peter F. Drucker

In the last blog, we looked at the importance of completing your old year before you can create your new year. Once you have laid to rest your coulda-woulda-shoulda’s, any lingering resentments, incompletions and regrets over what did or didn’t happen for you last year, you will be ready to create a whole NEW year to be just the way you want it to be.

Of course, 2009 was an unusually challenging year by anybody’s standards. While many of my dreams were delivered, I can’t say it turned out the way I had envisioned in every area of my life. Nevertheless, as I re-read what I set out to create, I see that despite some difficult outer circumstances, much of what I truly wanted did come true. And what turned out differently than I had hoped, I know will ultimately bring me my Highest Good because that’s the way the Universe works!

(By the way, if you haven’t yet requested the “Relfections Exercise” that my coaching colleage, Sue Koch, and I designed to help you powerfully complete 2009 and create the mental and emotional space for a year of new manifestations, please register for our F.R.E.E. 60-minute tele-class that will help you better understand how to use this powerful tool. See the end of the blog for more details.)

Once you have gotten complete with the old, you are ready for a brand new year of creating your life to be just the way YOU want it to be! Every January, I ask my coaching clients to do an exercise that I want to share with you now. It is a very effective technique for creating your year on your own terms, rather than waiting anxiously to see how it all “turns out.” You can ASK for what you want – and GET it!

This fun exercise is calledCREATING YOUR YEAR. I’ve been doing this myself for the past six years and the results have been truly amazing. Almost everything I set out to create in each of those years actually happened, including declaring at the start of 2006 that I would be engaged by the end of the year – despite not having any prospects for a date, let alone a husband. And did I mention that I was 53 at the time? And twice divorced? Yes, that was a pretty bold declaration. But it worked. With this process, it usually does.

Declaring in January 2006 that I would be engaged by the end of the year spurred me to get off the fence and take ACTION. So, at a friend’s urging, I registered on the relationship website, eHarmony. Within two weeks, I was “matched” for compatibility with a handsome widower by the name of Rick Schwartz. We corresponded for a few weeks by email, had our first “meet date” at the beginning of March and were engaged by September 2006. We got married the following May in a lovely wedding and reception with all our friends and family present. This January finds us still crazy about each other, nearly four years after our “meet date.”

So how does this amazing dreams-come-true process actually work?

STEP ONE:Create a “theme” for the year. How you would like to have this year show up for YOUR life? Make it catchy so you can remember it on a daily basis.

My past themes have been:

2005: Living as Cleopatra. 2006: The Year of Effortless Abundance and Nurturing. 2007: The Year of Miraculous Manifesting. 2008: The Year of Fabulous Fulfillment. 2009:The Year of Dreams Delivered. And I am declaring that2010 is going to be “The Year of the Miraculous Comeback” …for the whole WORLD, I hope!

STEP TWO: Create a list of attributes to describe how YOU want to show up for the world in 2010. State it in the present tense, as though it’s ALREADY a fact, and it soon will be:

In 2010, I am: A Messenger of Prosperity and Hope: Irresistible, Confident, Creative, Peaceful, Joyous, Patient, Humble, A Good Listener, Loving and Giving. I attract effortlessly WHO I AM and everything I want!

By declaring who you are in writing, you will actually see yourself begin to become this person. And these qualities and attributes will attract to you “who you are” and “everything you want.” As the Law of Attraction, states, “Energy attracts like energy.” Whatever you cultivate in yourself will show up in others who will be attracted to you – in business, in friendship, in relationship — you name it.

STEP THREE: List the main areas of life that are important to you. Then simply state what you intend to have show up in each area in 2010. No, you don’t have to know HOW you are going to get it. Each item is simply a declaration to the Universe that this is what you WANT – stated in the present tense, as thought it’s already happened.

It’s up to the Universe to show you the “How.” It’s your job to listen for the direction and then take ACTION. That’s what I did when I joined eHarmony. I took an appropriate action step, based on what I declared that I wanted. I had no way of knowing whether it was going to turn out to be the perfect action. I just knew I had to try. There are no guarantees. But if you stay open and receptive to the Universe sending you an inspired idea through your own imagination or a helpful suggestion from another person, it is quite likely to eventually produce great results.

Here are examples from three of my own key areas of life of what I have asked the Universe to manifest for me this year:

Career: I am a full-time, in-demand coach who loves her work. I enjoy working from home, speaking, writing and giving tele-seminars. I am building a thriving career as a True Purpose Coach and Practical Prosperity Coach. I gain recognition as The Practical Prosperity Coach and help thousands of people create the life of their dreams. The right people are drawn to me effortlessly.

Balance: Rick and I take time each week to play, relax and spend lots of quality time together. This rejuvenates me and I stay young and have great energy and focus for my work. I coach 4 ½ days a week and 3 weeks a month. The rest of the time, we play, travel and handle our paperwork, marketing and accounting in a timely manner. Our life together is full of EASE and ORDER. I take time each day to exercise, pray, relax, read good books and have quiet time for myself.

You get the idea. The other areas of life in which I am creating what I want for 2010 are Love, Finances, Home, Giving Back, Spiritual Fulfillment and Loved Ones.

What matters most to YOU right now? Believe that you can create your 2010 YOUR way in each of those areas and it WILL show up for you.

What it takes is reading your Year Creation list on a regular basis – at least weekly. And, most importantly, you must express GRATITUDE for all of it in advance, because that demonstrates your belief that the Universe really IS going to deliver it. The more you can truly feel the emotion of gratitude for what you know is on its way, the sooner it will arrive. That’s the Law of Attraction in action!

So don’t delay! The Best Year of your life to date is just waiting for you to create it.

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Get a F.R.E.E. “JANUARY JUMP START”

This month, Coach Sue Koch and I will present a F.R.E.E. tele-class entitled January Jump Start: Creating Goals that Matter. In one powerful hour, we will show you how to wipe the slate clean and get a Fresh Start on your new year!

Don’t miss this opportunity, if you are ready to…

Clean out the “junk drawer” of the past year to make room for exhilarating new possibilities

Discover the biggest resolution mistakes and how to eliminate them forever

Learn the secret to making your New Year’s resolutions turn out successfully – with ease

Crash through the roadblocks to success once and for all

Find out how to make your dreams come true and have FUN doing it!

Please join us on Wednesday, January 20 at 6pm Pacific for this invaluable F.R.E.E. information to help you make 2010 the BEST year of your life yet!

A special invitation will be sent to you shortly with a link to register for this class at NO charge. As soon as you have registered, we will send you the Reflections Exercise and the call-in information. Even if you can’t be with us live, be sure to register and you will be sent the Reflections Exercise and a replay link for the call.

NOTE: Because I am co-leading this special class, I have postponed the first Create Prosperity Now tele-class of 2010 until the last week of February. Please email me at caroll@practicalprosperitycoach.com to receive future call invitations and replay links.

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Happy New Year! Happy New Decade!! Doesn’t it feel great to have the challenges of 2009 safely behind you and a clean slate before you for creating a new, more abundant life? It sure feels that way to me.

More on my own clean slate in a minute, but first I want to acknowledge that I had planned to write a different blog this week. My plan was to share with you my template for creating your new year your way, as I did last January and the January before that.

I changed my mind when I was given a valuable reminder by one of my accomplished coaching colleagues, Sue Koch (pronounced “coach” –how perfect is that?). Coach Koch reminded me that it’s essential to clear out the clutter in your energetic space before attempting to put something new into it. I’ve written about this very topic in past blogs and taught it in my Create Prosperity Now ™ tele-class. Trying to create the life of your dreams on top of a lot of incompletions is like trying to cram a whole new wardrobe into a closet that is already jammed with last decade’s clothes you no longer wear.

Untruths you never fessed up to, times you’ve broken your word to someone without apologizing, or the literal clutter you have allowed to pile up in your home, car or office are all forms of incompletions. In other words, when you are not behaving in alignment with your own values, the resulting mental and physical clutter gums up the energetic “clearing” necessary for the Universe to be able to deliver what you ask it for.

The bottom line: You can’t begin to create your 2010 your way until you have completed 2009 for yourself – mentally, emotionally and physically. The most effective way to begin the completion process is to answer a series of questions that will cause you to think back over 2009 and identify the major things that you accomplished, failed to accomplish, are proud of yourself for, and not so proud of yourself for, need to apologize to someone for and need to let go of in order to complete the past and open an energetic “clearing” for all the good things you intend to create for yourself starting NOW.

Back to me and my feelings about the year just ended. For my family and me, 2009 was exactly like the opening line of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: It was both “the best of times” AND “the worst of times.”

The “worst” of times: Some things we had planned didn’t go the way we’d hoped, particularly in the area of finances. Through no fault of his own, my realtor husband found his income severely cut almost overnight when the U.S. housing bubble burst. We were hoping for a quick recovery; instead, nearly all his clients who had been planning to buy their very first home, invest in a second home, or move up to a bigger home found themselves either without a job or scared they might soon lose it.

After having invested heavily in remodeling the new home we bought together in 2006, while holding onto Rick’s smaller home as a rental income property — which we planned to move back to when Rick’s son Matthew was out of college — we found ourselves facing a growing stack of bills, as our household income was cut dramatically. Eventually, we came to the realization that we simply couldn’t keep piling up debt, when we owed far more on both homes than either was now worth. So, with some regret but also much gratitude and relief, we are now packing and preparing to move back to our smaller home a few years ahead of schedule. Rick helped our renters find a lovely new place at the same price, and we are sleeping much sounder these days, as we watch our debt diminish and learn the joys of cutting up credit cards and paying as we go!

The “best” of times: Well, just about all the rest of our life is the “best.” Almost four years after we met on e-Harmony, Rick and I are still crazy about each other and enjoying a very happy family life with Matthew, who turns 19 in February. Matt continues to grow into a wonderful young man with a good head on his shoulders, who is excitedly pursuing his dream of a career in law enforcement.

Our health is also excellent. Just ask someone who has struggled with health problems or watched a loved one suffer or pass away, and they will certainly tell you that good health really IS everything. We are profoundly grateful to be a happy, healthy family who are each doing exactly what we want to do with our lives.

In fact, Rick and I are both doing well in our careers by focusing on being of service to others in ways that fulfill us. When the real estate market took a dive, Rick found a second job selling flooring, which greatly benefited our finances. Not only does he enjoy driving around Southern California, meeting new people and helping them beautify their homes, but he has also gained several new real estate clients as he measured their rooms for carpet. Talk about a silver lining! We never imagined his part-time job would turn out to be a great source of referrals for his real estate business.

My coaching continues to be a joy and I have had the privilege of helping scores of people make their dreams a reality in 2009. If you didn’t catch the Create Prosperity Now ™ tele-class for December, you must email me for the replay link! The true stories I shared on that call about my clients’ triumphs in using the Law of Attraction to manifest new homes, new careers, new romances and new financial prosperity will inspire you to create your own amazingly abundant life, I guarantee it!

While we’re on the subject of completion, I also want to update you on a story I shared in blog number 72, Make the Leap, about my newlywed young relative who was unjustly accused of stealing merchandise from the retail store where he worked. On the flimsiest of evidence, he was arrested and then quickly released, but was fired from his job anyway. He finally reached out for temporary financial help from his family and friends when, after seven months of applying for jobs, he had found it impossible to overcome the fallout from this outrageous injustice. Time after time, he found himself on the verge of being hired, when a routine background check would reveal the arrest (which I learned remains forever on one’s record, even after charges are dropped), after which he never heard from the prospective employer again.

At the time I wrote that blog, I didn’t know for sure how it would all turn out for this fine young man who seemed to get such a lousy break, but now I do. In the course of telling me the story, he also admitted something I had never known about his heart’s most purposeful desire. He wrote, “I’ve been butting my head up against this job thing for 7 months now. It’s interesting that four different people have told me at various times, including my wife and mother, that they’ve felt in prayer that perhaps God’s plan isn’t for me to get another job, but to throw myself into full-time ministry. It’s tough because I know we have bills that aren’t getting paid and we can’t stay afloat on just my wife’s income, but mom said something to me the other day that struck me. She said, ‘sometimes God’s provision doesn’t come until we fully commit.’ I’ve been waiting for God to work things out so I can be secure in going into full-time ministry, but that would require no faith, so perhaps what I am supposed to be doing is just taking the step of faith. I would love not to have to get another regular job and just put all of myself into the ministry He has called me to and put in my heart, but it’s a big decision.”

All I could offer him at the time was my steadfast belief that when one of life’s doors closes, the Universe always opens up a window, and that events that first appear to be tragedies often turn out to be for our Highest Good after all. But we must have the courage to ASK for what we really want, BELIEVE that it is possible for us to have it (even if we have no idea HOW to get it), and then step back and allow the Universe to unfold the perfect plan for delivering it to us. And, as his mother so wisely reminded him, we have to truly commit to our stated desire before the Universe sends us the “How.” And we aren’t really committed until we are willing to ACT on our desire, even before there is any external evidence that it will turn out. As soon as we prove our commitment by taking action, the Universe invariably sends us all kinds of wonderful resources, people, and “happy coincidences” to help us make our desire a reality. My mentor Tim Kelley calls this phenomenon “the Universe’s matching funds program.”

This week, I got another email from my young relative. This time, he was asking for a different kind of financial support. Instead of short-term assistance, he and his wife are seeking investors in their new business venture: doing event photography, videography and family portraits. These talented amateur photographers decided to COMMIT to their dream by launching Genesis Photography. Financial backers who help them buy some upgraded equipment will get their loans paid back quickly from the early profits of the business. They’ve already done a few weddings and events, and he says it’s going really well. (I’m thinking it can’t hurt to have an “in” at his church, too!)

He found the perfect source for needed extra income in doing something he already loves to do, yet probably never would have considered as a business without the “tragedy” of being unjustly fired. The “window” the Universe opened for him now allows him to set his own hours and income level, with plenty of time to work as the Youth Minister of his church.

OK, back to YOU and your completions. What do you need to do to complete the past year and be ready to create some amazing opportunities for yourself this year? Sue Koch and I have developed a “Reflections Exercise” that includes a list of specific questions designed to help you thoughtfully examine the past year and identify what went right and what didn’t go as well as you’d hoped, learn from your mistakes, celebrate your successes, and determine the areas where you want to grow and improve during next 12 months. This completion exercise will set you up to powerfully create the next year of your life exactly the way you want it to be.

If you would like a complimentary copy of the Reflections Exercise, just email me at caroll@practicalprosperitycoach.com and I will send it to you. Or better yet, join Sue Koch and me for a life-changing F.R.E.E. tele-class entitled January Jump Start: Creating Goals that Matter, which we have designed to show you exactly how to break through your usual “resolution resignation” to effectively SET and REACH the personal goals that will make a difference for you — not just this year, but for the rest of your life.

The Reflections Exercise is part of the January Jump Start tele-class, along with some tried and true guidance for how to make the most of your opportunities for the New Year and far beyond! (See below for details.)

Next blog: My template for how to create your new year YOUR way!______________________________________________________________________

Get a F.R.E.E. “JANUARY JUMP START”

This month, Coach Sue Koch and I will present a F.R.E.E. tele-class entitled January Jump Start: Creating Goals that Matter. In one powerful hour, we will show you how to wipe the slate clean and get a Fresh Start on your new year!

Don’t miss this opportunity, if you are ready to…

Clean out the “junk drawer” of the past year to make room for exhilarating new possibilities

Discover the biggest resolution mistakes and how to eliminate them forever

Learn the secret to making your New Year’s resolutions turn out successfully – with ease

Crash through the roadblocks to success once and for all

Find out how to make your dreams come true and have FUN doing it!

Please join us on Wednesday, January 20 at 6pm Pacificfor this invaluable F.R.E.E. information to help you make 2010 the BEST year of your life yet! Just email me to register and we will send you the Reflections Exercise and the call-in information. Even if you can’t be with us live, be sure to register and you will be sent the Reflections Exerciseand a replay link for the call.

NOTE: Because I am co-leading this special class, I have postponed the first Create Prosperity Now tele-class of 2010 until the last week of February. Please email me at caroll@practicalprosperitycoach.com to receive future call invitations and replay links.